In district Badin, a corpse of a young Bheel was exhumed out of the grave and thrown in the open. Sahib-i-Iman (true believers of Islam) performed that inhuman act with the religious fervor of utmost sanctity. On the pages of daily Sindh Express, that photo and report were published with some detail. It can be said that this picture truly depicts the existing status of 'secular and Sufi' Sindh, and warrants a Dalit a 'death certificate' too.

This is the status of Adivasi folks of Sindh who are not only living stranded nomadic existence for centuries but they are living that life in the grave as well. This land of Sindh is no more of the land of those Dravidian, of Dalits, whose dead bodies it throws out of its embrace. The invaders, the outsiders spiritually rule over Sindh, and the elegant tombs are raised in their honor, whereas the indigenous owners of that land, are disgraced all their lives, and when they die, they are not even given space in their own land. This incidence was not the act of any lone maniac, but it was the reflection of the whole society, its attitude towards Dalits. This is the bitter truth that when the Dalit of Dravidian origin is ostracized and humiliated all his life and is not even allowed to rest in peace after death.

Apologist arguments in favor of the caste system have not been a recent phenomenon in India. For a deeply oppressive system of social division to have survived more than 3,000 years, it was indispensable to have exponents of Brahmin-Savarna supremacy at successive stages to suppress any sign of a revolt to challenge this ‘pre-ordained social order’. The most prominent of such methods of suppression nay enslavement was to limit the access to knowledge which ultimately handicapped vast masses of oppressed castes and put them in a perpetual state of helplessness and ignorance.

'brainwashing pedagogy....' by Unnamati Syamasundar

Since independence, constitutional safeguards for the oppressed castes are in place in the form of legally enforceable rights aimed at uplifting historically wronged communities and raising their status both socially and economically. Till now stigmatized as ‘untouchables’, these classes of the oppressed began to exert pressure to enter into educational institutions. To formally prevent any classes of persons from educating themselves by coercive diktats is now, not only a punishable offence but also a universal wrong. These provisions to a considerable extent have increased the participation of the Dalit-Bahujans in fields of power paving a way for the emasculation of the institution of caste. The state, for the same, is assigned with the responsibility of bringing positive reforms in the society with the help of progressive legislation.

The LDF government of Kerala took a highly significant decision in the socio-political history of India a few days ago; that it is going to implement economic reservation in the state.

As made clear in the cabinet decision by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a 10 per cent reservation would be given to economically backward sections in forward communities for recruitment in the Devaswam Boards (which controls and administers the majority of temples in Kerala) as part of the first phase of providing reservation to the economically weaker sections in forward communities in government service. In the latest announcement regarding economic reservation, it is also declared that the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes will be increased by 2 per cent, while that of the Ezhava community and other backward sections will be raised by 3 per cent. The said economic reservation to the forward communities was an election offer of the LDF in their election manifesto of 2016 Legislative assembly elections.

The Chief Minister has also called for a Constitutional amendment to implement economic reservation which he described as a new reservation for social justice.He also cleared that CPIM will pressurize the central government to implement economic criteria in reservation system. CPI (M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, going a tad overboard, has even challenged whether it would be possible for the BJP ruling at the Centre to implement economic reservation. He has also put forth a bizarre claim that misleading propaganda was being made ignoring the withdrawal of the benefit for 90 per cent of the forward communities and that the government had capped it at 10 per cent.*

There is abundant literature on Dalit/Dalitbahujan ideology that is being consumed in academia globally; however, the mainstreaming of Dalitbahujan theory is yet to take place. The empirical studies on Dalitbahujans are increasingly becoming the subject of study and curricula in different universities in India, such that the emergence and subsequent receptivity of essentially Dalitbahujan theory in coming years seem quite predictable. Dalitbahujan scholars argue that it is now possible to say that there is 'theory of theory' that has emerged out of Dalit intellectual assertions, and that can question both the Western Universalist claims and the ontological hegemony of Brahmanism in academia. Kancha Ilaiah writing in 2010 contends that:

"Before I joined as a fellow, no intellectual working at this prestigious center had considered constructing the nationalist history and thought from that perspective perhaps because in their view there were no such things as a Dalitbahujan perspective. It is possible that for them, only that which has been recognized by Western scholarship counts as a perspective. And, what I define as the Dalitbahujan perspective has not got recognition from any Western institutions. Besides, I am not a thinker who carries the certificate of any Western university.[1, p. IX]

Taking Dalitbahujan claims with some skepticism, one can at least argue that they have generated a vigorous critique of South Asian, particularly Indian societies, such that there has emerged a kind of theoretical perspective that sets it apart from any other existing theoretical approaches to study the problem of caste, class, and oppression. Moving beyond the "politics of presence or symbolic recognition in political and civil society," the emergent Dalitbahujan scholarship delves into the theoretical realm to do away with the dichotomy between 'theoretical Brahmins' and 'empirical Shudras' [2, p. 130].

Indian judiciary system is said to be confronted with a crisis of judicial accountability following the alleged contemptuous act of Prashant Bhushan in the Supreme Court, that too in the face of Hon’ble Judge Dipak Misra, the Chief Justice of India.

This incident is taken as a serious threat to the existence of judiciary as one of the founding pillars of democracy per se. But the truth is, a fair judicial system has been in the centre of all political systems.

Actually, while listening to the case of Venkateswara Medical College in a five-judge Constitutional bench, Dipak Misra, the Chief Justice of India, himself was allegedly pointed out as one of the parties by Prashant Bhushan, an internationally acclaimed lawyer of the Supreme Court of India and also the son of Shanti Bhushan, a former Cabinet Law Minister.

It is very interesting to know that this matter of Venkateshwar Medical College bribery case reached the Supreme Court exactly at the time when one of the parties is said to be involved in it.

It is a well-known fact that at the time of India's national movement, there was another movement known as the movement of social engineering or social revolution, led by Mahatma Phule, who had pioneered the foundation of a social revolution in India. Although contemporary thinkers like Ram Mohan Roy, Justice M.G. Ranade and G.G. Agarkar were quite active in social reforms at that time, Mahatma Phule was different from them as he was the first non-Brahmin social revolutionary in India.

Phule believed that radical ideology must be complemented by radical practices, which was in striking contrast to the upper caste elite thinkers and social reformers of his time. He criticized the literature of Vedas and Puranas and Hindu mythological stories woven around deities that facilitated special privileges to Brahmins in every sphere of life. Brahmins always had the upper hand and authoritative power of decision-making, particularly in religious affairs. The significance of his movement was that it not only aimed to eradicate caste-hierarchy from the society but also protested against gender inequity. He advocated the progress of backward caste communities while emphasizing the importance of imparting education to women in the family. In other words, he insisted on gender equality in the field of education, property, jobs, and of course, in the family.

In 2016, famous Indian author Chetan Bhagat published a novel called One Indian Girl. This book was criticised by some women because the book's narrator, who is also its protagonist, is a woman. Bhagat, even though a man, is within his rights to have a woman narrator in his novel. But it is unfair to say that he cannot be criticised for the same. It is one thing to not let someone publish a book or ask for its ban after publication, and another to criticise someone for writing a particular book. There is a reason why academic criticism from the angle of 'identity' (in this case gender) has increased over the decades.

Men wrote androcentric literature. Women were invisibilized and silenced. They were not allowed to write, their contributions were erased, and they were stereotyped and derided in literature. The contribution of Savitribai Phule is still not acknowledged outside Ambedkarite movement. When Tarabai Shinde's tract A Comparison between Women and Men was published in 1882, she faced immense backlash. George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans had to write under a male pen name. Women still do not easily find a place in shortlists of book prizes. Therefore, if Chetan Bhagat, known for his sexism, is criticised for writing a book from a woman's point of view, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power."-Michel Foucault

"What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?"-BR Ambedkar

From the time when reports of social media accounts being monitored by states emerged to the introduction of the Aadhaar card in India, there has been considerable debate on the intrusion of privacy of individuals by governments and corporates. Of course, it does seem paradoxical how several progressives were complaining about internet monitoring - on their Facebook and Twitter profiles. The more intellectual among them, especially those who have had an unhealthy dose of postmodern cynicism, blame it as an inevitable effect of modernity. Explicitly in some cases, implicitly in others, we can see nostalgia for the simple, harmonious, organic community of the village...

Romanticization of the village is not new in India. Several nationalist thinkers, ecologists, Marxists, and postcolonialists, to name a few, have contributed to the construction of the village as an ideal and idyllic society. Readers of Ambedkar would also be familiar with his rigorous critique of the idea of the village. I look at the village not just as a sink of localism, but also as an effective 'organic' mechanism of surveillance, as or more efficient than any modern system, reflecting on an important recent Tamil novella.

Dalits in India are mostly poor. However, there is a sizable middle class and very few rich. Poor and rich categories are not the point of discussion here, and neither is the entire Dalit middle class. The focus here is on the 'Educated Dalit Middle Class', that has failed to become a Dalit middle class in the real sense. Like other communities, Dalit middle class in India emerged from various processes and is drawn from different religious communities and numerous sub-castes within the larger Scheduled Castes. Among all these processes, it is through education that a majority of the Dalit middle class emerges.

Education works for Dalits in two important ways. Firstly, it transforms them into a rational, progressive and humanistic category of human beings, and secondly, it also promotes Dalit consciousness. These two which reciprocate each other are naturally supposed to transform the educated Dalit middle class into a special category that distinguishes itself from the middle classes of the caste Hindus and other religious communities. The functions such a Dalit middle class can perform are enormous at various levels.

Recently, a video was making the rounds, wherein a ponytailed man wearing glasses could be seen slapping a hapless man at the shrine of Bahaudin Zakariya. This man was Syed Mureed Hussain Shah, brother of Shah Mehmood Qureshi who is the vice chairman of Pakistan's Tehreek-e-insaaf (the major opposition party in the Parliament). Qureshi's family is the caretaker of the Bahaudin Zakariya shrine, however, Mureed Hussain Shah who doesn't belong to any party is often seen appearing in news and castigating his brother Shah Mehmood. The bone of contention between the two brothers is the fact that Shah Mehmood is the appointed caretaker of the Sufi shrine and working as a politician simultaneously. According to his brother not only has he besmirched the legacy of sufis but also that he has continuously been using the name of saints for votes.

On the first day of urs of Bahaudin Zakariya, Mureed Hussain Shah, in an attempt to keep his brother away from the shrine and its administrative tasks, tried to perform rituals himself while as per the customs his brother, who is the appointed caretaker of the shrine, had to perform these duties. Upon one of the devotees refusing to offer the bathing ritual, Mureed Hussain Shah went berserk and started slapping the devotee who may not have belonged to an upper caste Syed family. It could be literally seen in the video that the devotee fell at his foot and asked for forgiveness.

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